Unfinished Business
by Sevenstars
Summary: In the aftermath of "Dragon at the Door," Jess goes to bury Mike's parents, and finds something he wasn't expecting.


**Unfinished Business**

_by Sevenstars_

SUMMARY: This is a follow-up to "Dragon at the Door."

In "Wolf Cub" we see Mike in the barn, grooming a full-size sorrel horse which Jess later describes as "his." (It's obviously rather too large for him, which is why, in "The High Country," Slim fetches in the smaller light-gray one to be his main mount.) This sorrel could have been a Sherman Ranch pony, but I somehow had the notion it wasn't. In addition, I wondered why it was really necessary for Slim and Jess to be approved as Mike's guardians by a judge, when informal adoptions and takings-in of orphans were quite common in the West. It suggested that, perhaps, they were also being authorized to care for property of his. An explanation seemed warranted, so I decided to write one. Beta'd by Noelle.

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They were cleaning out the stalls in the barn that evening, after the Japanese had left, when Jess brought it up, quite out of the blue. "Y'know, Slim, Mike ain't got so much as a rag to his name, except for what he stands up in."

Slim looked at him a moment, his expression blank. "Holy... why didn't I think of that? What are we gonna do about it? Andy took all his duds with him when he went to school, plus they'd be way too big for Mike."

"Ain't but one thing_ to _do, pard," Jess replied cheerfully. "Gonna have to go into town and do some shoppin'. Same way we done that first winter I lived here."

"Oh, Lord," said Slim. "And we can't do it till Saturday, either." They had a standing arrangement for Ben or Jed to come out Saturdays and do the team changes while they drove into Laramie for their regular weekly stock-up. Slim glanced toward the barn door and the house beyond. "He can't make do on what he's got till then... if I go up in the attic, I wonder if I can find that trunk Ma put some of Andy's old outgrown things in? I think she was savin' 'em for one of our cousins, but she never did send 'em... maybe I can at least dig out some socks and longjohns and a shirt."

Jess for his part was gazing at the floor, his lean features dark and thoughtful. "Slim... you reckon them Indians left anything of his folks' wagon?"

"I don't know, pard. You know the way raidin' parties are, usually loot, then burn whatever they don't want. Why?"

"Just thinkin'..." the younger man said slowly. "Whatever's left, if anythin' is... it's his by right. And... and his ma and pa oughtta have a decent burial."

"Yeah," Slim breathed. "Yeah, you're right... you think you could find it? I wouldn't want to ask him to tell us where it was—if he even knows."

"Well, we know where Kami's wagon broke down," Jess replied, pondering the question, "so I can try to backtrack from there; that big ol' box wagon wouldn't'a' gone too fast, least of all with it rainin' on and off all day, so they'd'a' picked Mike up I reckon no more'n five miles from where we found it. His folks'd'a' had'a' been some ways back off the trail or Kami and his family'd'a' spoke of it, don't you reckon?"

"You mean they'd'a' seen... yeah," Slim agreed. "Maybe the Williamses pulled off lookin' for water, or graze for their team..."

Jess nodded. "What I was thinkin'. And he can't'a' been wanderin' more'n a day, he wasn't sunburned, or thirsty enough. Somebody that small can't walk too far in that length of time."

"Makes sense," said Slim. "You better take a packhorse, you'll want a couple of tarpaulins and a shovel... maybe a pick..."

"Best get it together now. Don't want him to see." Slim remembered how his friend's family had died. Something like this would be rough on Jess; it would be making him relive that time. He'd been a lot older than Mike, of course, and he'd lived a harsher sort of life even before the Bannisters came, but still—

"Would you rather I go? I kinda think Mike's a little fonder of you than he is of me... maybe I'm bigger than he's used to."

"No," Jess sighed. "No, pard, it don't matter. That was all a long time ago," and Slim knew the young Texan had read his expression.

"I was in the war too, you know," Slim reminded him gently.

"No, I'll go. I want to go. And I'm a better tracker'n you are anyhow. Not that there's like to be much to track after that gully-washer th'other night."

"You'll want to get out as soon as you can see," Slim guessed. "We've got some biscuits left over, I'll make you some sandwiches and pack a few things for you to take. Let's finish this job, I don't like leavin' Mike in the house all alone."

**SR**

It took Jess barely half an hour to get from the ranchhouse to the spot where Kami's wagon had broken down, but all morning and a good quarter of the afternoon to find what he was looking for. As he'd predicted, the rain had destroyed any tracks Mike might have left in finding his way back to the road, and he had to quarter around, swinging out from the wreck site in ever-widening circles, hoping he'd light on something. In the end, it wasn't tracks that led him to his goal; it was his fine-honed outdoorsman's sense of smell. An errant puff of breeze brought him a hint of smoke, and he checked, his hand falling to the Colt at his side. He stood in his stirrups to catch the upper scent, the faintest but truest. There it was again—a heavier smoke than that of a campfire, if he was any judge, and with a sharper, more unpleasant smell. For an instant his stomach contracted as he remembered the Bannisters and what had been left afterward. But there was no clinging, sickeningly-sweet odor of cooked human flesh, and he settled back again. After carefully determining the direction of the breeze, he began to circle.

He heard the sounds before he saw the site itself—a rustling, a muted squabbling of crows. He knew then that it was safe to go in. He pulled his Colt and fired twice in the air, and there was an explosion of noise as the birds got up. Jess rode in, steeling himself for what he knew he would find. Out of the corner of his eye he caught a flicker of dunny-gray—a coyote slipping off into the brush.

The Williamses had made a good little camp for themselves, a trench fire carefully set so it wouldn't spread, a little seven-by-seven-foot wall tent, some patches on it but still decent, pitched between the fire spot and the wagon so the latter would break the force of the wind. _Well, Mike did say they been on their way West as far back as he can recall,_ Jess thought; _likely they got into the way of makin' themselves as comfortable as they could some time back. _The Indians had burned the wagon, as they usually did, or at least they'd tried, but the first rain had come up in time to quench it before it was completely consumed; it wasn't salvageable, but looking at it Jess could see that it had been a good farm wagon of about a two- to two-and-a-half-ton capacity, the kind most emigrants had been using since the '50's. The tent they hadn't troubled to set alight, probably figuring that sparks from the wagon would do the job. Jess looked stoically at the bodies. Two; at least he didn't have to decide whether he ought to try to track the war party and rescue a captive. The rain had kept the scavengers off at first, but they'd made up for lost time since. There were also the remains of a milk cow; the Indians had butchered it, and the wild things had finished the job, taking it down to the bones and a few scraps of hide and gristle. He sighed, swung down, and walked back to the packhorse to get his tools.

The hardest part of the job was getting the remains onto a tarp; he put both in the same one, which was easier. In the process he spotted a little glint of metal half trampled into the earth, and knelt to investigate it. It was a ring, a heavy gold band, quite plain, but when he held it up he could make out something engraved inside it. He squinted in the afternoon light and read: _John to Christy, February 14, 1861_. Mike's ma's wedding ring, no doubt; the Indians hadn't taken it because it wasn't fancy enough to appeal to them. He set it aside; he'd give it a cleaning and take it back with him. Mike should have it.

_Least I know their names now,_ he thought, and went back to his task.

By the time he had them buried the sun was dropping out of sight behind the Medicine Bows. _No gettin' back tonight,_ he thought. He made his camp, using the Williamses' own fire trench. No need to move out from the spot. Jess wasn't superstitious, and if he had been, there was no cause for Mike's folks to wish him ill.

He pulled a few relatively undamaged boards from the wreck of the wagon and set them aside, then made his simple meal off the rations Slim had packed for him; he could see from the amount of them that his pard had figured he'd have to stay out overnight. There was a sandwich of cold roast beef and another of ham, a can of Boston baked beans to warm up, a couple of hard-boiled eggs, a can of yellow cling peaches and a couple of cans of tomatoes, some bacon for his breakfast, flapjack makings, coffee. After he'd eaten and cleaned off his dishes, he put the ring in his coffee can to boil clean, then set to work with his knife to make a marker out of the salvaged boards. _John Williams,_ he carved painstakingly, _Christy Williams, killed by Indians, May, 1872._ He was just putting the final touches on it when he heard it: the sharply sounding crack of a breaking stick.

Instantly he threw himself into a sideways roll, away from the fire and its telltale light, clawing for his gun. That was reflex, as much as anything: he knew that whatever had made the sound was neither Indian nor, likely, wild animal. Wild things never stepped on avoidable sticks in trees or brush, except through occasional inadvertance or when made reckless by terror, and in the former case they had a stealthy step that produced a slower, more crunching, less insistent breaking noise than the one he'd just heard. An Indian didn't either, because through his moccasin he could feel the object under his foot, and shift before his weight came onto it. But a white man would, or a horse or cow, and with their ruthless motion they produced just such cracks as he'd heard. He lay flat and listened. There—there it was again. His two horses had heard it too; their ears were up, pointing north. Then one of them nickered softly, and was answered from out of the brush. A loose horse: if it had been ridden and the rider didn't want it to give warning, he'd have silenced it, and if he had no cause to do that, he'd have hailed the camp as soon as he saw the fireglow. Cautiously, Jess began getting to his feet. A long equine face peered out of the trees; the firelight shimmered off a red-sorrel coat, with a broad white blaze. It moved out into the open, toward the fire, as if it knew that fires meant human company. "Easy, boy," Jess crooned. "Whoa, now. Whoa." The horse paused, looking mildly at him, and let him come up to it. There was a loop of hair rope around its neck, and a broken length trailing from it. Jess pushed his weight against the animal's shoulder and lifted its forefoot. Shod. This might be one of the Williamses' horses; the Indians had led it off, but somehow it had gotten loose and circled back to the last familiar camp it remembered. "Whoa, son," he murmured, looking it over. Not a wagon horse; this was a saddler, and a pretty decent one at that. He found a brand on the near shoulder; Running E, he read it—not one that he knew from these parts.

_Well, ain't no way I can look for its owner at this time of night,_ he told himself, and picketed it with his own two. He banked his fire and rolled up in his blankets, feeling strangely drained—and lonely. Nothing disturbed his rest.

**SR**

By the light of day he was able to get a better look at the horse. It was a gelding, about three years old, a good sixteen hands, with a deep, well-ribbed body, muscular legs and hindquarters, a neat, clean, intelligent head, tapered muzzle and pointed ears. Jess had seen such animals during the war, though not so many since—a Missouri fox trotter. Good horses, with the blood of Arab, Morgan, Tennessee Walker, and saddlebred; gentle, with a peculiar gait that had given them their name: they walked in front and trotted behind, the hind hooves stepping in the tracks of the fore ones and sliding forward, which minimized the percussive effect and made them very easy and comfortable to ride. He'd never seen one used as a stockhorse, although he'd bet that with that Morgan blood they could be trained to it.

"Wisht you could talk, feller," he said, sharing the last of his biscuits with it. "If you did belong to Mike's folks, you're his now, and I can take you home to him. But if you didn't... I ain't lookin' to get hung for a horse thief."

He looked toward the tent. Maybe...

The idea died as soon as he lifted the flap. The Indians had ransacked it, slashing the featherbed that filled most of its width, taking whatever they'd found attractive and vandalizing the rest. He poked around, just on the off chance, but there was nothing that would hint at the sorrel's ownership. At last, with a sigh, he gave it up. _Might as well get on home, _he thought. Then he brightened: _If he __did__ belong to Mike's folks, the boy'll know him. That'd be proof._

He made a rope halter out of an end of his packrope, tied the sorrel to the fork of the packsaddle, then began rigging Traveller. The sun was getting well up; no point in hanging around here, he'd done what he'd come for, all he could...

Then the increasing light struck a flash off something in the heap of debri that had once been the wagon, and he checked. _What—? _

The upper layers were a blackened jumble of canvas, wood, metal, and less identifiable substances—everything, Jess figured, from the remains of furniture to clothing and cooking pots. He found a stout fallen limb and used it to lever the messy bits aside, concentrating on the spot where he'd seen the flash. It took some digging, but he reached it eventually. A stout iron box, copper-riveted—that was the flash—and not unlike a Fargo box in size and general appearance. _Maybe they had a false bottom to the wagon?_ he thought. _Lots of emigrants fix one up, it's the best place to put anythin' valuable—and most of 'em have somethin' left from wherever they came from, __like money from sellin' a farm._

He dragged it out—the fire's heat had long since dissipated off the metal surface—and looked at the sturdy padlock, and without a moment's thought or remorse drew his Colt and smashed it with one shot. He'd been right. This had been the Williamses' stash for valuables. He found a marriage license from someplace in Indiana, dated about a week before the ring—_Mort'll want to see this,_ he thought, _it might give him a line on kinfolk_. A dozen or so letters, which he didn't trouble to look at in detail—_These too; they'll likely mention_ _names._ A trinket box home-carved from a black-walnut burl; it had no lock, and inside it were a few inexpensive items of woman's jewelry—a pink coral and a blue lava set, a chased gold locket, a shell cameo, a double-rolled plated bracelet with a couple of tassels, a pair of small silver earrings. _His ma's things; his now, like I told Slim._ A bill of sale for the sorrel horse, citing its price as _one dollar and other good and valuable considerations. Good, there's the proof I was wantin',_ he thought. A family Bible, probably bought new not many years ago—the first entry in its family register was the marriage of Mike's parents, with their birthdates under their names; John had been twenty-four and Christy—Christabel Alice had been her whole name—seventeen. (Mike was there too; he'd been born July 6, 1864, at "Greenley Farm, Parke County"—maybe land his mother or father had inherited. So he was going on for eight. There had been an older sister who hadn't lived past the age of four; Jess frowned over her name—Catrin Adara.) Tucked inside it, a set of honorable discharge papers for John Williams, Corporal, Sixth Indiana Volunteer Infantry, specifying that he'd served a three-year enlistment beginning September 20, 1861, and then re-enlisted in the 68th and finished out the war with it. (Jess nodded thoughtfully over that; he knew that when the war began, each Federal volunteer had been entitled to a bounty of $100 cash, with states, local communities, and even businesses adding as much as $500 more. That $600 would be enough to keep a small family for over a year—more even than that if they were able to get a lot of their food off their own land, as a farmer's wife would do. And by the time Williams re-upped some outfits were offering over $400 to veterans, not to speak of contributions from the county, the state, and the Yankee government. Maybe till then Christy had survived by keeping the farm going, maybe leasing out some of the cropland to a neighbor old enough not to be drafted, or paying him shares to do her fieldwork, and she'd have had her cow, chickens, vegetable garden, and fruit trees besides. Maybe she'd contracted out to sew uniforms for the Army, too; it hadn't paid much, but with most of her food coming off the farm, it could be used for things like taxes and shoes. Might even have done some teaching, if there was a school close enough, or sung solo in her church choir for pay—that could be worth $300 a year. Mike had most likely been born out of a furlough in late '63—maybe his pa had been wounded and sent home to convalesce—and the customary thirty-day one following a re-enlistment would have been the first time the man ever saw him.) A large bound notebook with marble covers—he leafed quickly through it; it appeared to be a sort of journal of the family's westward trek. A man's watch, not unlike Jess's own—silver-plated, with a hunting case; probably hadn't cost much more than the twelve dollars he'd paid for his. Silver chain for it, cheap steel watch guard. A pair of hand-tinted photographs in velvet-lined cases of imitation leather: one of a young man in a Union uniform—it had been very common, in both armies, for a soldier, once he'd been issued his uniform and equipment, to hunt up a travelling photographer or get a pass into the nearest town with a permanent one, and pose for a "shadow" to send home to his loved ones—and the other of the same fellow standing, erect and solemn in a decent pepper-and-salt sack suit, alongside a chair in which sat a young woman in an apple-green dress trimmed with darker green ribbons, with three flounces on the skirt, and bell sleeves with a flounce of lace showing underneath. Her bonnet was natural-colored straw, with three pink rosebuds under the brim, and the cameo was pinned at her throat. Wedding picture, probably: most girls simply wore their "best finery" on their wedding days, and kept it afterward for Sundays. Jess studied the two grave young faces. Mike clearly had his coloring from his ma: her hair—parted in the center, rolled down in a waterfall, and held with a net—was the same light reddish-blonde as his, her eyes large and dark brown. Her husband had blue eyes and black hair, but he probably wasn't Irish; he didn't have the upturned nose, and his hair was straight as a die. _Williams,_ Jess thought. _That's a Welsh name, ain't it?_ He'd known a fair share of Welsh folk, and they were mostly notable for wide faces and rather heavy features. This one was small-boned and slender-framed, almost boyish, with sharp, well-cut features; estimating by eye, using the fancy lamp on the table as a standard, Jess guessed he hadn't been any more than five eight or nine. _Got his pa's build, looks like; gonna take a spell gettin' any height on him. Likely won't never be as big as Slim, or even me._

Last of all Jess found a stout manilla envelope such as he'd seen cattle buyers use for cash. He hesitated only a minute, then slit it open. "I'll be dadgummed," he whispered. Good Yankee currency, and not the oft-distrusted greenbacks, either—gold certificates that not even a Westerner would discount, twenty-dollar notes. Something like eleven hundred dollars, by his quick count. He whistled softly. _Looks like Mike ain't quite the poverty case we half reckoned,_ he thought. In his checkered career he'd learned that improved farmland, with buildings, could sell for a good fourteen dollars an acre, sometimes as much as twenty-five; supposing the Williamses had had a quarter-section back in Indiana, which was plenty to support a family in that country, they could've got anywhere from $2240 to as much as $4000 for it. Of course, buying a wagon and team and outfitting for even an uninterrupted transcontinental journey cost from $600 to $1000, and the Williamses' journey had hardly been uninterrupted. Still, it wasn't chicken feed by any means. _Better get all this home._ He slid the envelope into his vest and stuffed the rest of his discovery into his saddlebags, then finished getting ready to go. Last he set up the marker he'd made for the Williamses' common grave, stepped back, and took off his hat. "Don't you worry none about Mike," he said. "Slim and me'll look after him. You got my word on it."

Then he caught up his horses and turned back toward Sherman Ranch.

**SR**

Mike recognized the horse, sure enough. "Ember! It's Ember!" he shouted excitedly. "I didn't think I'd ever see him again!"

Slim scooped the boy up and lifted him so he could pat the sorrel's nose. The animal whickered, clearly recognizing his scent. Jess pulled out the bill of sale for his friend's examination. "What's that mean, pard, 'considerations'?"

"Probably means it was a trade, or somethin'," Slim guessed. "Mike, can you tell us how your folks got this horse?"

"Sure," the boy agreed at once. "Pa took him as part pay for some work he did last winter. He said Ember would be my horse when my legs get longer."

"Is he broke?" Jess asked.

"Yeah, Pa had an old Hannibal saddle he put on him, and he took it real well, didn't buck or nothin'. Jess? How come horses buck?"

"Well, Tiger, any old-time range man'll tell you it's mostly on account of lions—cougars. They like to lie out on overhangin' limbs and ledges and leap onto things passin' by underneath. It works plumb good with deer and such, 'cause they go for blind flight, but not with a pitchin' horse, 'cause the way he spins and jumps and swallows his head is the surest way to put the cat on the ground, where he can finish the job with his hooves. One of my officers in the war told me it's only horses of mustang blood that seem to have the habit; he said that writers from way back tell about horses in places like Europe bitin', strikin', kickin', runnin' away, even throwin' themselves, but never buckin'. Bein' as there ain't no lions over in Europe, he said, it makes sense." He gave Slim one of the speaking looks they'd developed. "How 'bout we let Mike visit with his horse, pard, and you can have a look at what else I found."

Slim was suitably impressed by the money. "If you're guessin' right about how much land they had," he said, "I'm kinda surprised they didn't just take the cars cross-country. It's only about forty dollars a head emigrant-class from Kansas City to San Francisco, and they give you space for your stock, household goods, and such."

"Might be they wasn't plumb sure where they wanted to settle at," Jess suggested, "and they figured goin' overland might be slower and cost more, but it'd give 'em the chance to get a good look at the ground as they passed over it. Not so uncomfortable, neither, from what I hear of them emigrant cars." He riffled a thumb across the wad of notes. "Like enough they been holdin' off on spendin' it, much as they could," he guessed, "only they kept on gettin' hit with bad luck, like Mike said—lost a horse, had to repair the wagon, his ma got sick. Still, with whatever they fetched along with 'em—the cow, the wagon, their team, their household goods—and the government homestead law, they'd have enough here to make a good start, once they got wherever they was aimin' for."

"If this was put in a savings account," Slim mused, "by the time Mike's twenty-one it would amount to almost $2600. He could get a good start on that." He looked tellingly at the younger man. "You know, Jess, this might change some things."

"How so?"

"Well, when we thought he was just a stray, there wasn't really much reason for anybody to question us takin' him in," Slim explained. "You remember last year when Frank Newcomb found that runaway boy in his barn? He'd escaped from some orphanage in Colorado where he'd been pretty roughly used. Mort didn't make any fuss about the kid stayin' with the Newcombs—but _he_ didn't have eleven hundred dollars good gold certificates. That's property, Jess. The law's gonna want to make sure we're... suitable to take charge of it, and him."

Jess's expressive brows told the rancher exactly what he thought of that. "Do we gotta tell Mort about it?" he ventured, not in a tone that suggested he believed Slim would go along with the idea of doing otherwise.

"You know the answer to that, Jess," Slim rebuked, but gently. His lips quirked. "You're gettin' attached to him already, aren't you?"

"Ain't _you?" _Jess retorted.

Slim sighed. "Yeah... I know sendin' Andy to school was the right thing, but it doesn't mean I don't miss havin' him here. Miss bein' a big brother."

"Me too." It was barely a whisper. "There was four younger'n me, before the Bannisters come; I told you that. It ain't the kind of thing you forget." He looked up, his features settling into the cold mask he wore when he was about to go into a fight. "Plus which, I made a promise. I give Mike's folks my word we'd take care of him. You and me, nobody else." His voice turned low and hard and very quiet. "I ain't goin' back on that word, Slim. I ain't lettin' nobody take him away from us."

He saw the resolve tighten his friend's handsome face. "Well," Slim said, "we'll just have to find out what the law's gonna expect of us. And then do it."

-30-


End file.
